What 4 Clicks Can Tell You about a Shopper

By: Stafford McKay &bullet; September 21, 2015

Once successful branding has brought a visitor off the street and through the doors of a traditional retail store, a sales associate’s trained eye can start to asses pretty quickly the reason behind the shopper’s visit and what that person might potentially buy. This valuable understanding becomes increasingly apparent as the shopper scans the floorset, decides to stop at new or seasonal merchandise, or if they keep walking towards a department such as “women’s” or “kitchenware”. Good merchandising lures them in further as they make their way to a display, stop, and even touch specific items.

At some point during this progression – from stepping into the store from the street to gripping the handle of a frying pan or grabbing a hanger from a rack – the store visitor has made their shopping intent apparent to anyone who cares to pay attention. It’s the golden opportunity for the sales associate to step in and offer to close the sale. And most the time they usually do close. If they didn’t, stores would have no reason to employ people on the floor.

It would actually be pretty interesting to see what would happen at a top retailer’s flagship location – say along Michigan Avenue or Rodeo Drive – if the store were completely devoid of all sales associates on the floor for a day. How would the revenue per visit of each shopper be affected? I think you know the answer.

While digital can offer many things that traditional retail cannot – such as convenience to buy from anywhere at any time, virtually limitless inventories, superior options for price comparisons, etc. – digital does not have a very good track record when it comes to quickly identifying shopper intent and following through with the final mile that turns a visitor into a shopper who makes a purchase.

If you look at this same progression of events that convert a store shopper into a paying customer, but within the context of digital retail, you can learn a lot about where eCommerce has opportunity to improve. In our latest guide, we walk you through that very process, starting with the moment a visitor lands on your site all the way through their first, second, third, and fourth clicks. Within each click we detail opportunities (which the vast majority of retailers are missing) on where you can capture and respond to shopper intent.

For the past 20 years digital retail has been something like that hypothetically unmanned brick and mortar floor on Michigan Avenue. Sure, people might buy here and there. But they lack a guided shopping experience and no one is there to pick up on their intent and intelligently respond to it. It’s no wonder why year-over-year eCommerce growth remains relatively flat.

Stafford is the former Director of Content at Reflektion. He’s passionate about eCommerce Marketing, Technology, and Lake Michigan. When he’s not writing content, he can be found out on the water in the 1938 Chris Craft he shares with his family.